“Presumably at the end of winter, almost everyone will be vaccinated, cured or dead”, according to the Minister of Health

A shocking sentence. “Presumably at the end of winter, as it is sometimes cynically said, almost everyone will be vaccinated, cured or dead” due to the spread of the Delta variant “very, very contagious”, ruled, on Monday 22 November, the Minister of Health Jens Spahn, due to the current surge in Covid-19 infections in the country.

The minister once again called on the Germans to be vaccinated “urgently” in the face of an explosion in Covid-19 cases in recent weeks. Germany, especially the southern and eastern regions, has been hit hard by a new wave of contaminations that experts and politicians attribute in particular to a vaccination rate (68%) among the lowest in Western Europe.

Faced with the resurgence of the virus, which has already killed more than 99,000 people in the country since its appearance, outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel and her probable successor Olaf Scholz decided on Thursday to tighten restrictions for the unvaccinated while excluding a compulsory vaccination of the entire population.

“We currently have a fourth wave, we have a very, very difficult situation in many hospitals in Germany”, highlighted Jens Spahn at a press conference. “We see this wave gradually spreading to the West”, he added while intensive care services in hospitals are reaching saturation point, in particular due to the lack of personnel.